Iran’s quest to rejuvenate its energy industry after decades of sanctions is attracting renewable energy developers eager to plant turbines on windy ridges across the country.
Since 2012 the government has pushed renewables as an alternative to the fossil fuels that supply 94 percent of its electricity. Developers such as GI Umweltconsult and turbine suppliers including Nordex SE are preparing to enter the market.
While Iran’s renewables industry is concentrated mainly on hydro plants, the government plans to bolster wind as a way of preserving crude oil for export, and feeding the electricity needs of its more than 80 million people.
With an ambition to install 5 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2020, Iran would rank alongside France and the UK as an industry leader.
The decision to remove renewable energy sources from the Climate Change Levy (CCL) exemption will have a negative impact on the country’s renewable sector, according to a research and consulting firm.
GlobalData said that while the move is expected to generate around £490million by 2016 and up to £1billion per year by 2020, the energy sector will suffer as a result in the short term.
However this negative affect is likely to help growth in the long term – but areas such as the UK’s wind sector the hardest in the immediate aftermath of the decision.
An emergency summit convened in the wake of Westminster’s decision to scrap a subsidy scheme for onshore wind farms was attended by more than 200 people, the Scottish Government said.
Energy Minister Fergus Ewing organised the talks after the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced it would end payments under the Renewables Obligation a year early.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and others in the Scottish Government have already spoken out against the decision, which industry leaders Scottish Renewables fears could put up to £3 billion of investment in Scotland at risk.
Onshore wind capacity in Serbia is expected to surge by 2025, boosted by a number of new projects in the country.
The total onshore wind installed capacity will increase from just 20 (MW) Megawatts last year, to an estimated 542MW in the next 10 years.
Serbia’s wind capacity has been boosted in the past three years by a number of new projects.
A Scottish hydropower firm has lured away a top executive from SSE to run the business.
Green Highland Renewables (GHR), which was recently acquired by a London infrastructure investment firm, has appointed Mark Mathieson as chief executive Officer. He will join the firm in August.
Mr Mathieson has spent over 25 years in various engineering and leadership roles within SSE, most recently spending nine years as the Managing Director of SSE’s Networks business.
Developers are sometimes under-assessing the impact of wind farm noise and appearance on residents living nearby, according to new research.
The two-year study looked at how the visual, shadow flicker and noise impacts predicted by developers at the planning stage of ten wind farms across Scotland compared to the reality once operational.
The test sites included wind farms at Dalswinton in Dumfries and Galloway, Achany in the Highlands, Drone Hill in the Borders, Hadyard Hill in South Ayrshire, Little Raith in Fife and West Knock Farm in Aberdeenshire.
Thousands of acres of the countryside have been swallowed up by development in the past few years, new land use maps have revealed.
Wetlands were among the areas of landscape which were lost between 2006 and 2012, prompting concerns from wildlife experts about the disappearance of important habitat and the natural services such as flood protection they provide.
In total 225,200 hectares or almost 870 square miles of the UK, around 1% of the country, showed changes in land use over the period, according to land cover maps launched by the University of Leicester and consultancy Specto Natura.
The main change was clear-felling of more than 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of coniferous forest, largely in Scotland and Wales where much of the plantation forest is found, while around half the area was regrowing or had been replanted.
Around 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of mixed forest were also clear felled, according to the mapping which used satellite data from 2006 and 2012 and is based on 44 land cover and land use classes.
The study also revealed that more than 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) of forest was converted to “artificial surfaces” such as buildings, industrial sites and roads, while 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres) of agricultural land was lost to the spread of towns and cities.
Wetlands were also lost to development, with more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of such areas vanishing under artificial surfaces.
Confidence in the UK’s onshore wind sector has been further hit by hints that Westminster may remove the technology from the Government’s new competitive auction process, a renewables body has warned.
Niall Stuart, chief executive of trade body Scottish Renewables, said wind being blocked from the Contracts for Difference (CFD) scheme “would result in a massive and dramatic decline in development”.
Scottish Renewables revealed that, when asked whether onshore wind projects could access the new CFD auction, UK Energy Secretary Amber Rudd had told the House of Commons: “In respect of contracts for difference, we would be implementing the terms of our manifesto”.
This announcement came less than a week after Ms Rudd announced the early closure of the Renewables Obligation scheme, imperilling 250 onshore wind projects.
Speaking at his organisation’s Onshore Wind Conference in Edinburgh yesterday, Mr Stuart said: “Yesterday’s announcement serves to further undermine the confidence of Scotland’s onshore wind industry.
Around 250 onshore wind projects already in development are likely to be cancelled because the Government is ending subsidies which would aid their completion, Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has announced.
The cancellation of subsidies for onshore wind offered under the Renewables Obligation (RO) is likely to mean that 2,500 turbines which were due to be built are scrapped, Ms Rudd said.
She said consumer bills will not rise and insisted the move would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies that would otherwise have been paid out to energy projects.
The UK Government’s decision to end subsidy payments for onshore wind farms a year early could face a challenge in the courts.
Scottish Energy Minister Fergus Ewing warned that scrapping the “renewables obligation” scheme could result in legal action being taken by the green energy sector.
Cutting public subsidies for onshore wind farms would result in job losses, rising energy bills and stranded communities, according to energy minister Fergus Ewing.
The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is expected to announce measures to deliver on the Conservatives’ manifesto pledge to end any new public subsidy for onshore wind farms.
Mr Ewing said he was concerned about reports that the new energy secretary Amber Rudd was considering closing the Renewables Obligation scheme - the main support for renewable electricity projects - a year early in 2016.
The move is opposed by the Scottish Government and the industry, which has said it is prepared to take legal action to fight “drastic and unfair” changes.
By Professor Peter Strachan and Professor Alex Russell
Amber Rudd the Tory Government’s new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has made it clear she intends to make substantial changes to onshore wind financial support schemes in compliance with her party’s manifesto pledge to end “new public subsidy” for renewable wind power generation.
There may be some public support for this move if it is perceived as an attempt to create a level playing field for providers of energy, which would indeed be an admirable ambition.
But in reality such a policy change almost beggars belief. Perhaps the only great achievement of the late UK coalition government, with a huge amount of support from Holyrood, has been the successful deployment of onshore wind power generation; the achievement of renewable energy targets in Scotland is testimony to this success.
Local communities will have the final say in bids to build large scale onshore wind farms under plans set out in the Queen’s Speech.
The Government is introducing an Energy Bill which will change the law to remove the need for the Energy Secretary to approve large wind farms of more than 50 megawatts (MW), schemes which would typically involve dozens of wind turbines.
Seals are taking advantage of offshore windfarms to forage for food, satellite tracking has shown.
Data from tagging harbour and grey seals on the British and Dutch coasts of the North Sea revealed that 11 harbour seals visited two active windfarms off the German and UK coasts.
At both sites, the GPS tracking showed several worked their way through the area in a grid-like pattern, travelling in straight lines between individual turbines where they appeared to focus their hunt for prey.
Seals also tracked the path of subsea pipelines, with two seals in the Netherlands encountering a section of pipeline and following it on multiple trips for days at a time, the research published in the journal Current Biology showed.
Scotland has always led the way in renewables and All Energy has long been a showcase for the wide range of technologies which will enable the renewable and low carbon transition.
A new map shows the full extent of the “industrialisation” of the north-east by the windfarm industry.
Produced for the John Muir Trust, it displays “zones of theoretical visual impact” of existing windfarms if there were no trees or buildings in the way.
Huge swathes of Aberdeenshire and Moray – and practically all of Banff and Buchan – are affected.
Campaigners said the map highlights there is practically no escaping the intrusion of windfarms and single turbines on the landscape.
The renewables industry has hit back at Tory and Ukip pledges to stop new onshore wind farms with a report showing the sector added more than £900 million to the economy last year.
According to the study, the onshore wind industry generated £906 million in gross value added revenue to the UK economy in 2014, with £7 in every £10 invested staying in the UK.
More than a quarter (27%) of the economic benefits of onshore wind went to the area around the wind farm and almost half (48%) stayed in the UK region where the project was located, the report said.
The report by BiGGAR Economics for industry body RenewableUK showed that the revenue onshore wind adds to the economy has risen by £358 million since the beginning of 2012, a 65% increase.
Plans have been tabled for a £2billion power link between Aberdeenshire and Scandinavia which could create 200 jobs.
The NorthConnect scheme would carry electricity generated in Scotland and Norway to both nations to meet demand.
The consortium involved wants to build an onshore converter station in the village of Boddam, south of Peterhead.
The Liberal Democrats have set out plans for five “green laws” as they seek to establish their credentials on protecting the environment and fighting climate change.
The party’s manifesto pledges to bring in laws which would protect nature, cut waste, make transport greener, slash the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and improve the energy efficiency of homes.
A Nature Act would include requirements for the government to set out a 25-year plan for helping the UK’s nature recover, increase access to green spaces, protect forests, bees and birds and tackle wildlife crime.
And, following on from the Tories’ announcement yesterday of a marine protected area around Ascension Island, the Lib Dems have pledged a million square kilometre reserve in the South Atlantic.
It is claimed in a new report churned out by the Centre for Policy Studies that renewables-based power generation subsidies have destroyed the UK electricity market.
Author Rupert Darwall, a former Treasury special adviser, spouts that the costs of intermittent renewables are “massively understated”.
He asserts that current UK energy policy represents the “biggest expansion of state power since the nationalisations of the 1940s and 1950s”, that it is “on course to be the most expensive domestic policy disaster in modern British history” and that, by “committing the nation to high-cost, unreliable renewable energy, its consequences will be felt for decades”.
And: “To keep the lights on, everything ends up requiring subsidies, turning what was once a profitable sector into the energy equivalent of the Common Agricultural Policy.”
In addition to their supposed higher plant-level costs, Darwall states that renewables require massive amounts of extra generating capacity to provide cover for intermittent generation when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
Nearly half of Scotland’s energy consumption came from renewable sources last year, official figures show.
Provisional renewable electricity generation 2014 national statistics show 49.6% of gross electricity consumption came from renewable sources in Scotland last year, an increase from 44.4% in 2013.
Renewable electricity generation increased last year by 11.7% and is now estimated at 18,959 gigawatt-hours (GWh).
This is approximately enough electricity to power the equivalent of an additional 430,000 Scottish households for a year, compared to 2013.
The amount of electricity produced by projects owned by local communities has increased by more than a quarter in the last year, the Scottish Government has revealed.
Ministers have set the target of having plants producing 500 megawatts (MW) of power in communities and local ownership by 2020.
The latest figures show such schemes can generate 361MW, up from 285MW in the previous year.
The increase was revealed by energy minister Fergus Ewing ahead of the Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) conference in Stirling.
Trade body Scottish Renewables has announced the appointment of its new chairman and vice-chairman.
Patricia Hawthorn, partner at law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn, has been appointed chairman of the renewables body while Gordon MacDougall, managing director, Western Europe at renewable developer RES, has been appointed vice-chairman.
Ms Hawthorn replaces Ronnie Bonnar, managing director of Repsol Nuevas Energias UK, who has chaired Scottish Renewables since 2013.
The UK public believes that wind power subsidies paid by consumers are many times higher than they actually are, according to polling for the industry.
A survey questioned 2,000 people for industry body RenewableUK about what they thought payments for wind farms added to fuel bills, and found the average estimate was £259 for a typical £1,300 dual-fuel energy bill.
But the industry said the actual cost of wind power subsidies from domestic energy bills was around £18 a year.
